


In The Shadow of an Angel

by wanderlustlover



Category: X-Men (comics)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-15
Updated: 2009-11-18
Packaged: 2017-10-02 19:54:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustlover/pseuds/wanderlustlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One chance meeting changes two lives. But isn't that always how it is when dreams and the the waking touch?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Angel

I'm not someone's dream of the perfect child. Not someone you'd think of when your giving birth, or even patting your enlarge stomach before you go to sleep thinking about the miracle you about to bring into the world. No, that would be Angela, my big sister.

Short for Angel.

You think I'm kidding?

She never drinks, never swears, never says it's someone else's fault. She wears sweater sets with skirts and hangs out with the smart popular people. She'd never think of getting a tattoo, or skipping school to win a dare. She'd never disappoint our parents for even a nano of a microsecond.

She's too 'good' for that.

She's never late. Never making excuses, or dating the wrong people. She wouldn't be seen with the wrong people or come in without her homework done weather it was fifteen math problems or a seventeen page research project. She'd never go a day without washing her hair or brushing her teeth. Never forget to feed the meter or the cat, or call our parents if she wanted to stay at friends another hour or even the whole night.

And would they ever tell her no?

Of course not. She's their "Angel".

She's a straight A student. She's Honor Roll. Vice president of Students for a brighter tomorrow. Keeper of the minutes in Student Council because of her adorable hand writing. Captain of the Varsity Cheerleaders. Second in state for her ice skating because the last competition was beat out only by the girl who broke her ankle during her routine.

Jealous? You think I'm jealous?

Absolutely.

How can you not be jealous of perfection when your me?

My name is Cassidy Chance.

My sister calls me pest, but everyone calls me Cass, except for my best friend. He calls me Lucky, but it's a long story.

He's the only one who knows me for me. My parents- Well, my mother gave birth to me, but she wouldn't know one of my thoughts if they slapped her in the face and -my father?- well, my father isn't the man I loved as a little girl. He'd sit me on his lap and tell me I could be anything in the world. He meant like a congresswoman, or an astronaut, or someone with power to change the world.

I want to be dreamer.

Do you remember that large block of wood on the legs your parents got? The one with the shaped holes and blocks that you were supposed to hammer into their places? You know the triangle in the triangle hole. The star in the star shaped one. Of course you do. We all had it bout for us. We all played with it.

Well, I'm that square you tried hammering into the circle hole.

The one that just didn't fit right.

I wasn't perfect.

I wasn't like Angel.

I wanted to grow my hair long and thick, and let it fall in a middle part making me look like some Hippie born 30 years to late. I wanted to wear bell-bottoms, flip flops, and tanks tops with a flannel and daze out and see the world from an outsider's point of view.

So I saw it and I see it. I'm not made for the system they've set. This cruelty and hatred of people not like me. I would rather hold someone, who's crying that I don't know, or hand a beggar woman on the street twenty dollars, before I began to break the innocent sanctuaries of other tender hearts that didn't belong like me.

My best friend didn't even understand this one even.

I was alone.

Again.

I want to save the world from the over looked.

Noble Fool.

That was what the last person who understood this part of me called me. I think his name was Ben. He loved me, said he understood my soul. He carried the same ideals and ideas as me, but he saw it from the point of a cynic.

I see it from the point of a lover.

My parents ignored or over looked this, as they saw my grades always slipping. I could slip up at any turn, and that expression of gratitude and pride they had for Angel was replaced by one of shock and surprised close to annoyed disappointment for me. They don't understand that I'm a square in a world of circle slots.

I want to be a writer.

My passion for writing, and imagination are extensive. I test to above college in grammar, vocabulary and in writing. That's probably why they don't understand how I can get a 25 in my English III of this Junior year of high school.

I act older than I am, and looking it doesn't do to bad to add to that. But then hell if you had my chest I doubt you'd would think I was this young either on sight. The way I talk, I don't seem like a child of sixteen going on seventeen either. No only watching me lay on the floor in the middle of where I work, stare off in oblivion, or laughing at nothing give you my age. I can be and do all that because I don't have to worry about being perfect.

Angel's already perfect enough.

As long as my parent's had Angel to dote on and be proud of they had a saving grace from me. I would fail and she would soar in the clouds above me. I would stand on the ground and dream of flying and she would be up there doing it.

But in my own way I left the ground, I surpassed her clouds and caught the stars in my hands. I wrote my stories, and prayed to my goddess while my parents had their one god. I loved my folk music and hung out with people no one would be seen even looking over at. I cut class and got detention just to skip it and only have my parents frown at dinner and forget it when she mentioned her up coming race.

Did I mention she rode, too?

She IS perfect after all. She can do anything that comes into her pretty little head. I let my hair blow in the breeze, and I dance in the rain and sing to the moon. OH! And I loved the guy no one would even give the time of day because he had a misunderstood soul, too. I laugh at my darling best friend, the person I'd give up this world and my life for if he had but to ask even I love him so much, and so unconditionally. Saying I'll touch the stars for real one day, and that I'll never conform to the world of these circles. I relished my freedom from the normal days.

The freedom Angel's shadow gave me.

But tonight everything changed.

I was moving my mashed potatoes around making it look like I'd even attempted to eat those and the vegetables on my plate. I failed another three tests. My parents wouldn't know that till tomorrow though, so I resign turning off the sounds of them talking about my fathers new promotion and my mother up coming blue cross meeting.

Suddenly, Angel, my beloved shadow causer, drops her fork against the china plates we're eating on. My parents look at her with worry and I look at her through heavy lidded annoyed eyes. Tears start falling down her face like small perfect crystalline and even I start to get a little confused as my mother comes to her side. Angela pushes her away. My mother looks hurt.

I'm thinking 'Wow', she had the guts to actually do something like that. She shoves the table, causing plates to bump and glasses to fall, staining the white poly-silk table cloth our mother got in Sicily as she gets up from the table. By this time, hot and heavy tears are rolling down her beginning to look red and blotchy cheeks.

My father demands she apologize to my mother, and she does something I'd never in a million years thought she could do.

Angel sneered at him. I can tell she reaching a line inside I felt so long ago it makes me feel like she my little sister now. She's started to shake, and all I can think is I'm dreaming it. I'll wake up from it to find my heads fallen in the mashed potatoes and Angel will make a joke about me staying up to late on my computer and my parents will laugh.

She laughs suddenly, but the tears are falling harder and she's thrusting her perfectly blonde hair back from her porcelain face, looking at him with cold, frantic, hurting, angry blue eyes.

'I'm a mutant,' she says in a whisper to us all like it's a joke.

The whole room goes quiet. I think my mother even stopped breathing hard. All I could hear now was the classical music tape set to the backdrop of our fancy dinner. We're celebrating that she's a contestant for Prom Queen.

'Did you HEAR me?' she starts again getting louder when no one says anything. 'I'm a MUTANT!!!'

This time her eyes look like their flaring, this white color in the center then gone and suddenly all the lights in the room start flickering and shut off, the music stopping. Then suddenly they come on again and she laughing, her tears cascading, her hand over them hover odd balls of white energy that look like balls of lighting bolts of electricity.

'I'M A MUTANT!!!!'

The balls go at the floor and fall with loud boom noises. I gasp, my mother is about to faint and all Angela does is turn and run for her room, sobbing. It's like a speaker in my ears. She's breaking down, and all can hear is the static ringing in me ears. I turn to look at my father and he's contemplating a mushroom on his plate. He's contemplating a mushroom, and I look to my mother.

The look in her eyes as she turns to me, is telling me she doesn't know what to do. For the first time in her 40 years old life she has no idea what to do. It's almost like she'd ask me what to do now, like I would know. I'm not part of the rich family. Not one of their collective of the trio of perfectness. I excused my self in a whisper, not sure why I even said it. Neither of them would have stopped me.

Neither looked like they could even articulate anything.

They looked like shards of broken mirrors.

So here I am staring at the stars and the moon, from where I'm sitting on the roof.

We've all heard about mutants and the destruction they can do. Angel blasted our carpet and floor. We've heard they can hurt, and worse. We've heard they carry a deadly disease. We've all known that anyone associating with one is suddenly an outcast and anyone who was one dropped out of sight as fast as stars fall from the sky. Of how peoples fear and hatred leads to their deaths, but I'm not thinking about that right now.

I can hear my big sister, my prefect Angel, who I hated and loved all at once, sobbing and cater walling into a pillow below me. Her window must be open I'm thinking detachedly almost, but I'm too numb to be detached now, and my mind is million miles a minute on autopilot.

I'm thinking that tomorrow my report card will show up with eight failing grades, and eight requests to meet with my parents and discuss my academic studies, again. And I'm thinking that not all the blonde hair, Prom crowns, the straight A's, and not all the kings' horses and all the kings' men can change what just happened tonight.

I'm thinking perfection just cracked.

I'm thinking for the first time since I came out of the womb, the child no one would dream of, ten months, three days, 4 hours and 27 minutes after Angel did, that I won't have a shadow I was standing in anymore.

And I'm terrified of tomorrow.


	2. Molting

Do you think you know me?

Are you honestly sure?

I bet you're right, but I know your wrong.

You know 'me'. You've passed me in the hallway, braided my hair while we ate popcorn and laughed at movies, shared a moment's glance, hated me or idolized me. You've called me best friend, brown noser, girl friend, suck up, beloved daughter, high school snob, bitch, prep, slut, and even teenage queen, but you've never met me.

You don't know me.

You can't know me. I don't even know me.

Because there is no me.

I've become the reflection in the mirror that you've made of 'me'.

My IQ isn't anything special, and I couldn't quote you pie out to the twentieth if you were going to pay me. I've made terrific grades all but once in my life though. I got a B in Chemistry my fourth six weeks of my senior year, but everyone sympathized because Snowflake -my little white kitten- died and it was hard. That's not what's made you know 'me' on sight thought.

There's one of 'me' in every town of every state and every country in existence, maybe even every planet if there are extraterrestrial's out there. If not then I'm jealous of every alien beauty on every planet who was never born because their species never exsisted.

She's not a 'me', because she'll never be.

I'm that girl with the perfect blonde hair, the bright sparkly blue eyes and the dashing million-dollar winning smile you'd all die to have. The one with the huge group of friends who'd come and go with the gossip, wouldn't be caught dead with an extra ounce of fat on them, and will never have a stain on their shirts or a hair out of place. I'm the one with seven credit cards in her purse each with their own account, and enough allowance from my father in one week to last me the next two.

Who's parent never said no to her never unreasonable request and would send her to Sweden for Christmas with seven or ten friends for company, so she won't be lonely. The girl with the perfect daughter-parent relationship. The one who's dating the senior, star quarter back that looks like he could be a model, or even pose for Play Girl, he makes your knees weak so fast.

Yeah, that's right, you're getting it now. I'm the girl whose life makes you need a dentist.

You're so sure you know me that you don't.

You only know two things about me truly.

Number One. My Anglicized name is Angela Marie Chance.

It's on my birth certificate, my fingerprints, and my medical files.

Everyone forgets that. Maybe I missed it when they made that decree.

They all call me Angel.

I used to love the name. Now I hate it.

So much so that looking at religious text pictures, stain glass, and church in general -because you can not avoid the subject of them- annoy me to no end. But you don't know that. All you see is the pious, always there on Sunday in the very front row, good girl, with bell clear voice, who never goes anywhere without her small silver cross dangling from her throat.

I would rather Angie, or Annie, or Anne. Even my grandmothers fleeting memory where she calls me Angelina-Rose seems better.

I have this memory from when I was six and a half, bouncing up and down on an English pony. The wind was blowing my hair in its baby curls behind me and laughing in my ear. The sun was this bright radiant beacon in the sky I was bound to find and put in a locket as a jewel if I just kept riding far enough towards it. The clouds and sun streamers were my guides and they all whispered joy in my ear.

I adored horses at such a young age, they said it was strange for children, but a bright sign of a good rider if they started me right then. So immediately it was crammed smack dab between early novice tumbling lessons and a tutor whom spoke in French only. Great parents right? Kids at six are going two start first grade and I was learning French, to ride, and to tumble.

Oh, you wanted that?

Take my life. What'd Oliver ask?

Yes, I'll ever wrap it up in a bow for you.

Well, I fell off the horse that day. Never before had I entered a day like that, and after it there would be many more like it. So many that I've lost count, forgotten there was a time when I might have known there were ways to rebel, to break free. But none of them as clear as they day I fell off.

'I not want ride ta' pony n' more!'

But that wouldn't do would it? They couldn't just let you stop, could they? NO! Of course not. You were so far beyond normal children. A child prodigy they called you. She's only a child, don't let her waist her talent away on the fear one bump has landed her. So of course the next day they shoved you up and slapped his rear and you hold on for dear life like any sane person would right?

Do I even need to say 'insert sigh' here, or is anyone getting the drift yet?

Oh, where was I, yes telling you why you were wrong. I've eighteen years of reasons and I've only begun. I sound like a spoiled brat whining to you, don't I? Maybe I am? Or maybe I'm just a caged bird, whose mute, and forgotten that a small trap door ever existed, but blindly searching still.

The hunk of a boy friend you'd love to have, you know the football quarterback who I seem blissfully in love with? He gets drunk every Saturday night and after games, and then goes and messes around with strippers he'll never see again, leaving me alone, thinking I don't know. I've only seen him drunk once, and we've only slept together twice. Once on our one-year anniversary, the second after Winter Formal Party ended.

He'll probably even ask me to marry him when we're snuggled into each others arms that third time after prom.

And those friends, who seem so into everything and agree with my opinion a lot of the time because I'm cheer captain, or soon to be Prom Queen, that you wish you had because I'm so liked, so popular. They'd turn their backs on anyone in a second. I've seen lambs go to the slaughter, I've sent them myself, maybe you were even one of them. I see that look, I know their cruel and vicious need for dirty, slimy, goop, dirt or gossip.

Why? Because it's our image. The image you give us.

The image we give you because you demand it.

OH, where was I?

Tales within tales, I sound like a depressed poet, or an old fable or philosophical writer, but then you wouldn't ever see that in me. No I'm just the bubble brain cheerleader, and all around good girl.

I am a poet, but you'll never know that.

But back to the point. I told you only one of the two things you DO know about me. The first was my name, a thing I can not change. The only part of me that is me.

Number Two. I'm a mutant.

Okay, so you don't know that exactly. My parents do. So does my little sister.

I've known since I was six and I fell off that horse I was, I am, my own support system. There is nothing else there in a world built of money, china plates, and crystalline, to hold you. I told them last night in the middle of dinner, hoping beyond all my knowledge my mother might grab me and hug me, tell me the world would still be a safe place for me.

It's once snow princess now condemned child of hate and bloody fear.

My mother has shrunken into a world of illusions, I think. She smiled at me when she opened my windows to let the sunshine wake me like always. I am curios and nervous to what her thoughts are. She mentioned shopping, and a date with her best friend for lunch and left saying Ella would have breakfast ready in a matter of minutes.

I stumbled from bed, feeling shaken and my chest and throat dry from crying myself to sleep last night. My arms have small feathers along the other edge so the stain against my long sleeve shirt hurts. That was how it started to a degree. I started waking up with feathers in my bed, tiny down ones that I couldn't figure out where they were coming from and one morning I woke up and a row of them were on my under arm from along the bone from shoulder to an inch from my wrist.

No one noticed my sudden like for turtle necks or sleeves, and why should they? It's still January and I also get too cold. I don't know what I am. The feathers don't go anywhere they just stay there and hurt if I press down, and the electricity flickers when I get emotional, shutting off when I get too angry. I know I'm different. I know they'll call me a mutant.

I don't know who or what I am to me thought.

But again I got up. Brushing my teeth, my younger sister appeared in the doorway and stood there. And there we were; me- brushing my teeth looking at her reflection, her- brushing her hair and looking at mine. It was one of those moments you don't have words to explain because there aren't enough in the world to explain expressions.

She'd not all that much younger really. Only ten months. Our parents must have been madly in love or under too much lust for any two god fearing people. She is standing brushing long strands of brown and red gold hair, as it coasts over her shoulders and past her chest in this waterfall effect, looking at me like I'm no one new. For a moment, a shot of jealous strung and it only got worse as I looked at her.

The look that surrounded her was wind blown, and careless. Or was it carefree? She was standing there in clothes I wouldn't see anyone wear no less ever be seen touching in a store. A rainbow tie dye looking small tank top, and a pair of tight on the tights and then loose bell bottoms that had holes in the bottom from her constant walking around bare foot.

She'd never been afraid of our parents. She gave them her opinion. She swore when she was angry. She sang into her brush at the top of her lungs with the radio. She was her own person, she didn't allow anyone to push her to something she didn't like. Always my little pest though. The bounty of my confusion, and my jealousy.

She was free.

My pest was nervous, but I'm not sure I'd ever seen her get scared. There wide eyes, sparkling blue, as she watched me watching her, watching her watching me, I wonder if for the first time more than yelling at each other or saying snide comment we realized how different we were, and how much we actually did care about each others opinions.

I finished my teeth washing the brush off and dropping it in the holder, trying to prepare myself for whatever she'd start saying now. It was bad enough watching all of them last night when I told them, but I don't think they expected em to leave electrical blast marks on the floor.

I never asked to be a mutant. I can't see where it could be my fault. It just happened one morning.

She rushed to hug me suddenly before I was half turned around and I was startled to say the least. My sister was one of those people who holed themselves up in their room at the computer or with a spiral the moment they got home from work or anything at all. Almost anti-social to a degree, though she did have her social butterfly's points, too, I must admit.

She was my little sister? How would this hit her life?

"Cass," I started but she looked up and pressed a finger against my lips. I was bewildered to say the least. The last time we'd really stayed around each other it was to talk about the fact she didn't want to go to prom because it meant wearing a dress.

"Don't." she said with an oddly gentle resolve, before letting her finger fall away, and I was at a loss for what to say. "It-I thought-I'm" Under my eyes, I watched her begin to stumble. She was as lost for a way to talk to me as I was to her. We were two different worlds, universe, and entire galaxies of life.

Cassidy stepped back slowly unevenly, her eyes still on mine holding out two slips of paper. What was this?

"I got these for you last night, Ang."

I took them, and glanced down at the papers under her watchful eyes. One was a printed up white card with black lettering that read:

School for Higher Learning Prof. Charles Xavier 1407 Grey Malkin Lane Salem Center, NY, 10274

1-914-555-1234

I was a little confused automatically reading the name for "Higher Learning". What was that about? It sounded like a geek, prep school. What was I thinking? I was a prep. Being a mutant just seemed to come first for classification suddenly. I flipped the paper to the back the second was a hand written piece of paper with two things written.

It was bad hand writing, nothing professional like the first. One said Underground, and had a phone number for someone to contact with 'Special Problems the everyday world can't Handle' it read. God, that sounded like a therapists call from a million miles away. The second jotted note on it read 'Haven: A Community' in it's self and had an address. I looked up bewildered. I knew my sister well enough -I thought I did, I hope I do- to know what she was trying to do.

Was she trying to help me?

Did my sister actually know mutants?

I effectively was surprised when she moved and hugged me again, this time placing a kiss on my cheek. We hit the Twilight Zone suddenly as I smiled barely, and then she mirrored it. I pulled her back into my arms and hugged her tight, just holding on for moments on end as she held on to me. I'm not sure if any tears fell, it was a moment outside of time.

"Jesus," my lips whispers without me as whole world seemed to spin oblivious in that moment when I hugged her tight. Nothing outside mattered. There was no bathroom, no cook calling breakfast was ready, no world waiting to hate before it could even have a chance to love. And yet here, in the smallest way it was being given to me. Someone wanted to acknowledge me, and maybe try to help.

The smallest gesture suddenly made me feel so alive. So wanted for just being me. And me didn't matter for being in box's. Neither of us did.

"I love you, Cassidy."

We weren't a prom queen and a hippie. We weren't school prep and school grunge. There were no mutations. We weren't on different sides of the same war. We weren't seeing the lines. The rest of the meaningless world and its images vanished. What we didn't know didn't matter. We were just two girls in a frightening world realizing it was a frightening world and we had something to hold on to for a single moment in time where it had decided to stop.

"' Love you, too, Angela." The lights flickered sporadically like the dinning room ones had last night, but we were too busy holding on for the first time in years to notice.

We were sisters.


	3. Leaving the Nest

The car was warm, but I felt chilled all the way to the bone. The windows were down, but it had nothing to do with the air outside. It was actually warm, too. It hasn't rained in a while, and as its night, the stars are peeking out from the dark. The stars were white pinprick holes in that black blanket over the world. I left out a huff and readjust how I'm sitting.

I'm biting back the urge to slap the horn and instead look back out the window in the passenger side door. There's a nice picture if you go for that artsy crap. There's a house, it's go two small balcony's on the second floor, and they comer together with a roof piece, and large column's to form the front door and it's area in front of it.

They're there right now. Hugging and talking and doing god knows what.

Taking forever in my mind.

One is my Angel. I always call her that. "My Angel". I suppose tonight will be the last time I call her that. I don't know if I'll talk to her after tonight. It'll all be touch and go, but for the rest of the night she'll still be My Angel.

Sometimes I wonder if I really know Angel. Her real names Angela, but I don't think anyone's called her that in years. She's captain of the Varsity cheerleaders, holds a position is a dozen clubs and is on the Council. She makes good grades, and sometimes breaks the rules. Rarely though. Once or twice for me, but I don't know about any other times. We don't talk about those other times.

I first met her when I was four, because we were in the same playgroup at The Red Caboose. It's a rich kids day care so stop giving me that poof look of confusion. We didn't really know each other at all, since that was back in the age of cooties, before even hair pulling and running away came into the pictures. Girls were disease-infested creatures, who played with dolls, hated dirt, and thought white and pink were the only things came in.

I didn't live here all my life. I was born in this town, but I left when I was nine. My parents divorced and I got given to my dad by custody. He took me and moved me all the way to Texas. Dry, arid state if there ever was one. Not nearly enough rain. But at least girls new how to wear their jeans there. Didn't see many cowboys' hats, so I still think it's odd to have it being the Cowboy State.

I came back when I was fifteen. Sophomore year. Slid into the football team and took over the quarter back spot by the next year. I'm good. I don't mind telling you. It's not ego, I just am. Okay, maybe some of it's ego. But what's wrong with being good and knowing you're doing well?

Okay, back to what I was saying.

Well, I came back the end of my sophomore year actually. By one month. I really didn't know who she was I just trying to get a hold on where I was, how to deal with a mother I hadn't seen in forever now in my twenty-four seven. She was as annoying when I showed up as she was tonight, I just think I'm used to her levels of insanity now.

Like right now. She yelled me on leaving because it was too late, and that no girl was worth ruining my life over. I don't think my mom even remembers Angel some days, and she's seen her lots. I think some days she doesn't even remember me. We're just little misquotes in her life.

I met Angel the next year though. I saw her for the summer before that and by that I mean just saw. She never realized but I came to watch the cheerleaders go through their camp, in the off times when I wasn't working. She was the best, of course. It was how she got Captain that year. A year earlier than you're supposed to.

I'm not saying like she was the first one in a hundred years or nothin', but the school hadn't had a junior being Captain of the Varsity team in a while . Some of the girls didn't like it at first, but they warmed up to her. Everyone warms up to her. Something about her is so charismatic….so…perfect. No, I'm not lying. It's just something about her, who she is, the ways she walks, holds her head.

She knows it, too. I don't think she's happy about it, but she doesn't change it either. She knows her life, and lives with it, I think. Like all of us.


End file.
